Grains of the Voice: Poems

Christina Pugh's Grains of the Voice exhibits a pervasive fascination with sound in all its manifestations. The hu-man voice, musical instruments, the sounds produced by the natural and man-made worlds-all serve at one time or another as both the framework of poems and the occa-sion for their lightning-quick changes of direction, of tone, of point of reference. The poems are eclectic in their al-lusiveness, filled with echoes-and sometimes the words themselves-of other poets, but just as often of songs both popular and obscure, of the noise of pop culture, and of philosophers' writings. But Pugh always wears her learn-ing lightly. Beneath the jewellike surfaces of her poems is a strenuous investigation of the nature of and need for communication and a celebration of the endless variety of its forms.